God, Science, Sex, Gender
Conversations with Interdisciplinary Voices about Christian Ethics
Tuesdays, March 6, April 3, & May 1, 6:30-8:30pm
Join us for a timely and expansive dialogue on Christian ethics and human sexuality, sexual diversity, and gender. In three facilitated sessions, we will discuss perspectives and research from science, literature, theology, and biblical studies.
Too often, conversations on sexuality and gender devolve into the repetition of party lines and defensive postures or become limited to particular biblical scholarship and denominational ideology. These discussions will consider an interdisciplinary body of scholarly research published in a collection of essays from the fields of anthropology, sociology, psychology, philosophy, literary studies, theology, and ethics. The essays were presented at a conference held at Loyola University Chicago. They reveal how faith and reason can illuminate our contemporary understanding of human sexual and gender diversity.
The conversation will be launched on March 6 by Patricia (Patti) Beattie Jung, editor of discussion text, God, Science, Sex, Gender: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Christian Ethics.
Facilitators:
Mary Farrell Bednarowski is professor emerita of religious studies at United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities. Her research has focused on American religious history and literature, theological creativity, multiple forms of women's leadership, and the surprising capacity of religions for self-renewal in changing historical contexts. Her books include New Religions and the Theological Imagination in America, The Religious Imagination of American Women, and Twentieth-Century Global Christianity (editor).
William (Bill) McDonough, Associate Professor of Theology at St. Catherine University in St. Paul, teaches Christian ethics and coordinates St. Catherine’s Master of Arts in Theology Program. He is especially interested in virtue ethics and the relationship of ethics and spirituality. His latest written work is on what the Christian tradition has to learn about sin and conversion from Alcoholics Anonymous.
Patricia Beattie Jung, editor of the discussion text, God, Science, Sex, Gender, is Professor of Christian Ethics and Health and Welfare Ministries at Saint Paul School of Theology in Kansas City, Missouri. A prolific researcher, writer, and scholar in Christian ethics, she has taught at Loyola University (Chicago), Wartburg Theological Seminary (Dubuque), Lutheran Theological Seminary (Hong Kong), and Concordia College (Moorhead).
Recommended text: God, Science, Sex, Gender: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Christian Ethics, edited by Patricia Jung and Aana Marie Vigen. University of Illinois Press (2010).
WHEN: Tuesdays, March 6, April 3, and May 1, 6:30-8:30pm
COST: $20/series, $10/session - made possible by generous donors
